LAUSR

Ancillary services are becoming an indispensable tool for maintaining power grid stability due to the increasing adoption of renewable energy resources, many of which (e.g., wind and solar power) are inherently variable. Some energy resources, such as electric vehicles (EVs), have a significant potential for providing their own ancillary services and creating ancillary service markets in smart electric grids. The installation convenience of EVs and plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHVs) has made them the target of many studies. In previous works, the grid-integrated-vehicle (GIV) mechanisms are recognized as a suitable approach to exploit EVs and PHVs for ancillary service markets, particularly regulation markets, which require fast responses. It is important to consider individual consumption behavior (e.g., vehicle usage and energy consumption) in selecting optimal operational points of EV and PHV for maximizing resource effectiveness and user profit. There is, however, currently no mechanism that takes the individual consumption behavior of market participants into account. In this article, a new vehicle-to-home (V2H) aggregator is proposed, which allows individuals to participate in a regulation market using the in-vehicle batteries of their EVs or PHVs. The results show that the proposed V2H aggregator can successfully supply predictable power to the power grid and maximize the profits of individual market participants. Note to Practitioners—This article proposes an architecture of home energy management systems (HEMSs) with electric vehicles (EVs) and plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHVs) to participate in a regulation market using the in-vehicle batteries. Ancillary services are the mechanism for the power grid to ensure the quality of electricity. The proposed architecture is composed of two stages: 1) calculation of the charge and discharge profiles considering minimizing the electricity charge at home and maximizing the capacity to provide for ancillary services and 2) real-time control of charging and discharging the in-vehicle batteries to follow the regulation signal provided from the manager of ancillary services. The simulation result shows the estimated benefit of the aggregator obtained by the trade in the market and the precision of HEMSs’ charging and discharging to follow the request signal.